Are you familiar with Microsoft Works? It's sort of a My First Office Suite kind of thing which includes support for Microsoft Word and Excel documents. It is usually not sold separately, but instead comes pre-installed on new OEM machines. Well, Microsoft has announced today that it will kill Microsoft Works, and replace it with Microsoft Office 2010 Starter - an ad-supported version of Office 2010.

"I hope that OpenOffice.org starts to receive some love from Oracle because it can easily be an alternative to Microsoft Office if it is giving some TLC when it comes to the interface and adding some features that are in high demand which keep Office users from moving.

Although it is difficult to measure, OpenOffice already has perhaps 20% of the Office market or more.

What features are these that are in high demand which OpenOffice allegedly lacks? "

I don't think it is so much features that are need as a push to get it too people. That being sad I wonder if Oracle realizes what they have bought, With what they are holding they could really take it to MS, Hell if they can gather enough money to buy Novell they could push edirectory, and really go in for the Kill.

I don't think it is so much features that are need as a push to get it too people. That being sad I wonder if Oracle realizes what they have bought, With what they are holding they could really take it to MS, Hell if they can gather enough money to buy Novell they could push edirectory, and really go in for the Kill.

All Oracle has to do is construct a list of features that the big customers demand, find 1000 programmers, put them on a 3 year contract each and get them living, breathing and eating OpenOffice.org source code. Same can be said for OpenSolaris - they need to go out, hire 1000 programmers who eat, sleep and drink driver writing.

Oracle has some of the best assets, all they need to do is allocate the resources, hire the right managers and you'll get results. Having seen the hiring procedures of Sun Microsystems based on past experience - I am not surprised in the slightest that Sun got themselves in the situation that they are. Here is a quick time - how about interviewing people and hearing what the person has to offer the organisation instead of churning a CV through a parser looking for key words.